Western fears of genocide have triggered an intense debate over the best way to guarantee civil order and prevent a worldwide outbreak of ethnic cleansing. Some insist on Nurnberg-type legal tribunals for war criminals. Others advocate global mediation between warring groups. But neither approach addresses the root problem of militias. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, a professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, is author of numerous books on global politics.

As each new killing field is unearthed in Bosnia or Rwanda, calls for bringing the perpetrators to justice resound in the global media. Only a new Nurnberg-type legal tribunal, human rights activists argue, will prevent a worldwide plague of ethnic cleansing.

Another view circulating in global political circles holds that the one hope for restoring civil tolerance in countries shredded by genocide is to bring all sides together through global mediators. In this view, passionately held by Bosnia and Rwanda peace-makers, relentlessly pursuing war criminals will only scuttle the fragile peace-making processes.

The split comes down to the question of which approach should have priority in U.S., NATO and UN policy: punishing genocide or making peace? Thus, among U.S. forces in Bosnia, some emphasize going after war criminals; others, fearful of endangering American lives, want all attention put on peace making.

Both views have deep philosophical roots in Western -- as opposed to Bosnian or Rwandan -- history which helps explain why they arouse such intense debate in the Western media.

Much of the passion about genocide can be traced back to the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes who held that, in their natural state, all people are savage. Only firm authority can rescue them from their savagery. As countless Western films have informed the world, the civilized Germans reverted to savagery when the Nazi leaders, instead of restraining them, egged them on. Today, this logic holds, the world must punish the Serbian Nazis before they or their emulators wreak even worse genocidal damage.

On the other hand, the peace-making view draws its idealism from Woodrow Wilson's dream that wars will end only in a world governed by democracies and guided by justice. The Wilsonian dream has been transmitted to college students all over the Western world. Many are now active in global affairs, including peace-making in Bosnia and Rwanda.

In war-scarred regions, what matters most for ordinary people is not just peace and justice but a way to survive and have hope for the future. The priority is to find realistic solutions to their terrible problems. And solutions depend less on which models to apply from the top down than on identifying precisely what triggered the horrors in the first place. In both Rwanda and Bosnia, the ticking time bombs waiting to be disarmed were, and are, militias.

The Bosnian genocide began in 1992 when irregular Serb militias were quickly formed from within the Yugoslav National Army. Driven on by an ideology of a Greater Serbia and the orders of the Milosevic regime in Belgrade, they frantically launched ethnic cleansing in the hope of creating a fait accompli which nobody could roll back. The most expedient way was through break-neck mass slaughter of Muslims and Croats.

In Rwanda a big Hutu militia, the Interahamwe, had been in existence for over two decades. Ever since the Hutu coup in 1959, the Hutus feared the return of Tutsi armies from Uganda followed by thousands of Tutsi refugees demanding return of their lands. When the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a mysterious plane crash in 1993, Hutus suspected a Tutsi plot. Speedily, the Hutu leadership instructed the Interahamwe that the best defense against a Tutsi invasion was to kill all Tutsis remaining in Rwanda.

Traditionally, militias defended their own communities while regular armies defended their king or state. But in modern times militias -- mainly young men with uncertain futures -- have found themselves primarily defending states against those who have been defined as communal enemies. Not surprisingly, the militias end up terrorizing their own communities in the name of defending them.

How can one get rid of such militias? The only way is to cut off their heads and legs. Once their connections with anyone in the state -- or in opposition movements with a chance of gaining power in the state -- are cut, their whole reason for being vanishes. At the grassroots level they degenerate into mere criminals.

In Bosnia current U.S. policy appears headed in the right direction. By bringing about a split between Milosevic and the Bosnia Serbs, the U.S. has weakened the latter's fighting morale. And by pushing grass roots economic development for Serbs as well as for Muslims and Croats, U.S. policy has alleviated some of the grassroots resentment on which the militias of all three peoples thrive.

The lessons of Bosnia and Rwanda are that whenever militias begin to form in strife prone regions, global alarms should go off. If those militias show close links to the state while anchored firmly in communities, the alert should turn red. If the international community had understood this lesson some years back, bloody Bosnia and bloody Rwanda might not have occurred. Now the best hope for restoring civil order in both countries hinges on decapitating their militias.